Prostitutes: We worked for Enoch Smith in Bensalem for heroin

Thursday

Alleged pimp Enoch Smith could take the witness stand Thursday at his rape and prostitution trial in Bucks County Court in Doylestown.

Smith, 36, of Philadelphia, told Judge Wallace Bateman that he wants to tell his side of the story, even though his attorney has advised against him testifying.

“I’ve never had a chance to say anything since the day I got locked up,” Smith complained, after the jury had left the courtroom Wednesday.

“At the end of the day, if I get found guilty, I’m gone. So I gotta have my say,” he said.

Smith is accused of running an illegal sex-for-money business using Bensalem motel rooms and other locations. Four women have testified that he charged men to have sex with them, and paid the women in heroin and other drugs.

Two of the alleged prostitutes took the stand Wednesday. The first, a 27-year-old Philadelphia woman with a seven-year heroin addiction, told the jury that she was homeless and selling her body on Kensington Avenue in the city when Smith approached her four years ago and offered her a job as an escort.

The woman, who had been thrown out of her parents’ home because of her addiction, said she was exhausted from sleeping on the street, so she agreed to consider Smith’s offer and visit his home.

“I got to see things I didn’t have, like a place to sleep every night. And clothes. And food,” she said. “I decided to stay.”

Smith wasted no time putting her to work, she testified. He took suggestive photos of her wearing lingerie, then posted them on an online classified site.

The woman said Smith told her what to charge for “dates,” and all the money went to him. She was paid in drugs and followed strict rules.

“He didn’t want us to date black guys because they’re aggressive and cheap,” she testified.

The woman said she slept with up to 12 men a day and turned over the money to Smith. He fed her a steady diet of heroin and crack cocaine. The second drug was to keep her awake so she’d work more, she said.

“He said I worked like a horse,” she testified.

When business was slow and she experienced heroin withdrawal, Smith forced her to perform “sexual favors on him,” she said, or she wouldn’t get any drugs.

The woman described visiting numerous motels along the Route 1 corridor in Bensalem and Philadelphia with Smith. She said there were times when a rival pimp would make trouble for them by calling the phone number on her ad to find out what motel they were at, then sending police there.

The second woman, a 20-year-old Lower Merion High School graduate, testified that she met Smith last year after she was sent to a halfway house in the Kensington section of Philadelphia as part of her drug treatment.

The woman, who said she started abusing prescription painkillers in high school then switched to heroin when she could no longer afford the pills, testified that being in the drug-infested neighborhood was a trigger that she couldn’t resist, and she relapsed. She was kicked out of the program on a cold December day and wandered the streets for hours.

“A car pulled up and a woman jumped out,” she testified. “She told me she works for this guy and he takes care of her, and she’s happy.”

Smith was driving the car. The woman said she refused the woman’s offer at first, but when Smith returned later and offered her a ride, she got in.

Smith gave her a large amount of heroin, she told the jury, more than she’d ever used before. He brought her to a bedroom where she fell sleep. She testified that she was in a drug-induced haze when Smith came into the room later and talked to her about being a prostitute. Like the other woman, she said she was told that she would be paid only in drugs.

“I wanted more drugs, so I said yes.”

The woman said she let Smith take suggestive photos of her with a digital camera. Within 10 minutes of him posting them on the Internet, Smith’s cellphone began “blowing up,” she said, with numerous phone calls.

Later that day, two men came to Smith’s house and had sex with her. The first was an older guy who was “obviously married and talked about his kids,” she said. The second was a younger, balding man.

After the second “date,” the woman said she’d had enough. She asked to use Smith’s phone to call a friend, but called her mother instead. Her mother, who had learned earlier that she’d been kicked out of the halfway house, was already searching the streets of Kensington for her.

When he found out she had reached out to her mother, Smith got very angry, the woman told the jury. She said he threw her down and raped her.

The woman admitted that she didn’t tell anyone about the alleged rape. It came to light when she was called before a grand jury investigating Smith for the Bensalem motel incidents. Prosecutors decided to consolidate the cases and have a Bucks jury decide the Philadelphia charges too.

In addition to the women, the jury heard from police and forensic officers, and looked at photos and website postings allegedly seized from Smith’s laptop and his 11 cellphones. A Bensalem police officer cataloged the numerous items found in Smith’s car, including hypodermic needles, other drug paraphernalia, and hundreds of condoms.

Smith is charged with rape, sexual assault, prostitution and related crimes, both in state and federal court. If convicted of the most serious offenses, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

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